Happy Monday and welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. We're still here. You are still reading your Bible and I'm still thankful for you. So well done for picking up your Bible another day and also for letting me be included in your Bible reading journey. As we prepare to enter into the next section of One Kings, you need a couple resources that I think would be really helpful as you read through this section. It's challenging. I'm not gonna lie, but there are resources that we have today. In fact, we have an embarrassment of resources that will help you navigate this terrain exceptionally well. In fact, one of the resources that I'm gonna commend to you is only five bucks it looks like. So let me give you the first one. I've referenced this one last year but it's called a Synoptic Harmony of Samuel Kings and Chronicles, and this is by James Newsom. You can find it on Amazon for, it looks like 33 bucks here on paperback, $75 for hardcover. I don't think you need that one. Pick up the paperback, it'll be just fine. That one's a helpful resources and that one's only available. In paper. I can't find that one electronically anywhere, but that's fine. I have it at home. It's worth having a copy in your library to help give you some support as you read through these passages. The second resource I'm gonna recommend to you is called a synopsis of the Old Testament, and this one is specifically for Logos, Bible software. This resource is only $4 and 74 cents. At least that's what it says on my website here of looking at it. Maybe there's a discount involved in there because I have. A membership with him. Or maybe it is just $4 and 74 cents and that in any case, it's worth you. Having this resource is helpful. It'll give you the parallel passages as you're looking at the text really useful as you're trying to figure out some of the similarities and dissimilarities between Kings and Chronicles, and also as you work through the kings that we're gonna look at in just a few moments. Finally, one last resource I would commend to you is something over here I have in my office. This one is called the Rose Book of Bible Charts, maps and Timelines. I'm pretty sure I've recommended this to you before. This is a hardcover book. It's Spiral Bound and I think it's about 35 bucks. I have one in my office, but I just purchased another one to keep it home. I want one in each location 'cause I study my Bible in both places and I wanna have this book available all the time 'cause it's just so helpful. There's a lot of charts and graphs and maps. I. You really can't go wrong with something like this. It's a physical book that you can always refer to. I have it open. As I'm reading some of the books that I'm reading and I utilize it to help mentally construct images and pictures that help me put this whole thing together. Reading the Bible is hard. I know that you don't have to tell me twice. I understand it, but there's so many helps today than if you're willing to put in the sweat equity. You'll find the Bible to be a lot more inviting and a lot more accessible than you may at first realize. So don't lose heart. As we make our way through these next chapters in First Kings and Chronicles, you're gonna find yourself switching back and forth and maybe getting a little confused user resources, and I promise you it'll pay dividends as you understand the text. With that said, we just finishing the first 11 chapters of Kings. Now I know there's a lot of people that will outline these books in different ways, but some of the most helpful outlines are the most simple. Lemme give you a simple outline for First Kings. Chapters one through 11 are the United Kingdom, not the one over across the pond. The United Kingdom as in Israel and Judah, they're one place, it's one people. For the first 11 chapters, you have a United Kingdom under David, and then under Solomon you have this beautiful tapestry of varied people under one leader. That is King David. And then of course Solomon, who expands the kingdom and does great things. It's a wonderful time for them. In chapters 12 through 22, which we're gonna begin today, is the kingdom divided, the divided kingdom. You're gonna have many kings here. So 12 through 22 is the divided kingdom, and this is where it gets a little more tricky to read. But don't worry, I'll be with you the whole time and so we'll pastor PJ at some point, and so you're gonna want to think about it in those terms. Chapters one through 11. United Kingdom chapters 12 to 22 divided Kingdom. We start that today. Now as we enter into chapter 12. Remember, we're here because in Chapter 11, Solomon, who had the Lord appear to him twice, rejected the Lord. He embraced the false gods of his many wives and he cast the Lord aside. And so the Lord in judgment said in chapter 11, verse 11, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and I will give it to your servant. This is God initiating the divided kingdom. In chapter 12, now we have Rehoboam, Solomon's son. Solomon gives the Kingdom to Rehoboam, and now Rehoboam goes to Shechem where all Israel meets him. This is Shechem in Northern Israel. The people come to him and they ask for relief. They said, your father, king Solomon was heavy in taxation, heavy in the burdens that he put on us. Please relieve us. And he wisely, to his credit, says, give me a few days to think this over. He consults two groups. The first group is the older men that it served with Solomon, and he said, what do you think I should do? They say, Hey, we think you should do what the people ask. Lighten the burden. They'll love you forever. He dismisses them and then he asks his friends whom he grew up with and says, Hey, what do you guys think? And they say, come down heavy on them. Show them who the boss is. Assert your authority and your dominance and let the people know who the true king is. Apparently he likes their wisdom. And so when the people return under the leadership of Jira boem, his name will be important in a moment. He says, look, you guys asked for lightness. You guys asked for a lighter yoke. I'm coming at you with the heavy, and he uses a vulgar terminology to refer to this, but he's saying, I'm not gonna give you any relief. In fact, I'm going to increase your burden. I'm going to. Show you how strong I am. That's essentially what he's saying here. Verse 15. So the king did not listen to the people for it was a turn of affairs brought about by the Lord that he might fulfill his word or which word, the word that we just saw in chapter 11. So even though this is happening, and this is not a good situation for the kingdom, this is the Lord's will. Some divisions are of the Lord. We have to recognize that some departures and some restraints are of the Lord. We have to acknowledge that the Lord is behind everything and that includes the times when we have to separate. As painful as it is, we have to acknowledge that sometimes God is behind things that we can, we can't fix. In fact, when the kingdom divides. Rehoboam still tries to assert his authority, and so he sends a durum or hadum, as we read in Second Chronicles, who was task master over the forced labor. He's trying to assert the very policies that he just talked about. They don't like that. So the Kingdom of Israel reject him. They kill him, and they send him with his tail between his legs. R fleas runs back to the house of Judah or to the tribe of Judah, where he finds safety. But in verses 21 and following. He assembles the whole people, which by the way, you'll notice here in verse 21, when Ria Bo came to Jerusalem, he assembled all the house of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin. So notice, even though only Judah was mentioned initially, this includes Benjamin Judah is like a donut. They have the outside territory of the southern kingdom, and square in the middle is Benjamin. And so they have always been understood as one tribe. At some point they merge together and become understood as one tribe, even though technically it's due to end Benjamin. In any case, they assembled the troops and they are on the precipice of a civil war. However, in verse 22, it says, the word of God came to shamiah, the man of God. And he says, say to Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, king of Judah, and to all the house of Judah and Benjamin, and to the rest of the people, thus says the Lord, you shall not go up or fight against your relatives, the people of Israel. And to their credit, again, in their wisdom, they decide not to fight against God and they return back home because he says This thing is from the Lord. And again, we have to recognize some divisions are of the Lord, we don't like this. Jeroboam is quickly installed as king in the Northern Kingdom. And from this point forward, you have to understand that when we use the term Israel, we're talking about the Northern 10 tribes. That would include everybody. It's a big chunk of territory. If you're looking at your Bible maps or your Atlas or your rose, what's this book called again? Rose Book of Bible Charts, maps and Timelines. You're gonna notice it's a big chunk of land. The Southern Kingdom is quite small in comparison. Israel, when you see it in the Bible, henceforth is a reference to those 10 Northern tribes. And Judah is a reference to the two Southern tribes, which again, primarily refers to Judah. They're the more prominent of the two. But Judah and Benjamin, they're the two tribes that are understood to be the Southern Kingdom. So Judah and Israel, we're gonna use those terms. Israel, Northern Kingdom, Judah Southern Kingdom. Judah is the good one. This is the one that God's gonna preserve, and this is the one by which the line of David will continue. The Northern Kingdom, by and large, gets the verdict of guilty, not good. In fact, as I'm looking at my Bible charts here and my map of the Kings, I don't see any, I. Israeli Kings who are called good. In fact, I, if I'm remembering rightly, none of them are, I'm pretty sure that's the case. And so we begin with perhaps the most infamous of the Kings and it's Jira Bo Jira, B the Son, a Neba. In fact, you're gonna see his name as we look through the rest of the book of One Kings and Second Kings Jira. Bo the Son a Neba is the one who begins. The steady decline for the Northern Kingdom, and he starts off with a bang. In fact, Jone's Golden Calves is the heading that outlines the second half of chapter 12. Now, he doesn't just create one in the line of Aaron. You remember when Aaron did this? And he's Hey man, we just threw the Golden, and this golden calf came out, and so they began worshiping it. How was I supposed to know? JIRA Boem. The Northern King Jira bomb, the son of Natch, he creates two golden calves. Not one but two, 100% more sin. And this is interesting because he installs those two golden calves at two centers of worship and they both are north and south. So you have in the northern, most, northern most part of the northern kingdom, which is Dan. And then you have the southernmost part of the northern kingdom, which in this case is no longer beersheba 'cause it no longer includes a southern kingdom. It is now Bethel. So Dan and Bethel both get a golden calf and people begin worshiping it. And of course this thing is evil in the sight of the Lord. It became sin for the people. Went as far as Dan to go before one. This is a steady decline for this kingdom. This is a bad thing. The Lord hates it. And you don't have to say much more than that. You would already know that. But in chapter 13, one Kings chapter 13, you find out that God actually tells jbo that this is a bad thing. And this is gracious of God. 'cause he knows this. He knows this. But God sends a man of God in chapter 13 to Bethel to tell Jbo his problem. So the man of God cried against the altar by the word of the Lord and said, oh, altar. Altar thus says the Lord. And behold, a son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name, and he shall sacrifice on you the priest of the high places who make offerings on you. And human bones shall be burned on you. And so this man of God, this no name guy tells. King ome in the northern kingdom. God's going to destroy this and he's gonna judge you for it. And he's gonna do so by the man named Josiah. And this is interesting because Josiah doesn't come on the scene for another about 300 years. This is fascinating that God's gonna tell him this. In this case, ome responds poorly. Jira Bobman doesn't say, thank you for letting me know that. He sticks his hand out at him and says, sees that guy. He's talking against the kingdom. This is treason. Can't do this. But as he does this, his hand stretches out and God has his hand dry up. And this is a fascinating, stunning reversal because the judgment is instantaneous. It gets even more strange because then once it happens, he says, oh man of God, please give me back my hand. It's funny if you think about it. And the man of God responds, the man of God untreated the Lord and the king's hand was restored to him and it became as it was before, I think this is incredibly gracious of this man of God, whoever he is. The king's Hey, come and eat with me. Let me reward you for this. The man of God is told by God, don't do that. This is gonna become important. It's just a few verses because the man of God is warned by God and is it comes off that way. It was commanded of me by the Lord saying, you shall not eat or drink anything. Nor return by the way that you came. So God is giving him abundant clarity about what his expectations are. Insert another no-name prophet in the city of Bethel. We're still in Bethel. Remember, this is the northern kingdom. This is where one of the golden Cav sits. This guy's introduced as a prophet. The Bible calls him a prophet, and that's what's gonna make this whole story so strange and intriguing. This old man goes to the man of God that was sent to J Bo, son of Nebat, and he says, God told me to tell you to spend time with me and to come eat at my house, but verse 18 says, but he lied to him. What motivation would this guy possibly have? We don't know. We have no idea what his intentions are except that he lied to the man of God. As God would have it, the man of God believes him and goes to his house and as they're sitting at the table, no doubt, eating and drinking. Verse 20, this old man prophets who has no name and is a liar, has the word of God. Come to him and get this God rebukes the man of God through the prophet of God who lied. Crazy. I know you're a little confused. I don't it's a bit of a pretzel, but this is how it worked. He says, because you've disobeyed the word of the Lord and have not kept the command, God says you're basically gonna die. That's the idea here. And that's exactly what happens. The man of God is killed. He's done with a lion. And the lion has a donkey that's sitting next to him, which shows that he didn't do it because he was hungry. This is a judgment of God. That's the idea. The prophet then takes his sons retrieves the man's body buries him and mourns over him. Isn't this interesting? This whole situation happened because of God's word not being heated. Now, I'll grant you this. The prophet of God lied, but it was the man of God's responsibility to corroborate what he had heard with God. And my guess is that had he had done that, God would've responded. I think it's a lot of times that we interact with people that say, I know God's will for your life, or Here's what God wants you to do. And I guess that's helpful in a certain way, especially if they're preaching from the Bible. We can appreciate that's what we go to church for, but we really ought to be good Bereans, shouldn't we? We have been told by God to test all things by the word of God, and that is our responsibility. Even if someone has a Bible in hand and says, this is what God has for you. This is what God wants you to do, we should always say, does that correspond to what I see in scripture? And if God has clearly spoken on A, B, C, and D and we're being told to do F instead, we ought to say, I can't do that. In fact, we ought to be like Luther, who says My conscience is bound by scripture. I can't do what you asked me to do. We ought to be the kind of people who like the man of God, or perhaps unlike the man of God, stand firm by what God has said, even if it puts us in an awkward situation. And no doubt this man of God was in an awkward situation because he was given the royal treatment. Jira bom the sin of Nebat was asking to have him come to his house and to deny someone that it's a rude thing to do, but he did it, at least initially. Prophet of God had to lie to him to get him to to get him to compromise his convictions. Let it be so that you are not the kind of person who is swayed by anybody or anything. If the word of God has spoken clearly, First Kings Chapter 14, OME, the son of Neba, has a son by the name of Aja. Aja gets sick and so he sends his wife to Aja, the prophet. He says, please go to Shiloh and ask him what's gonna happen to our son, but disguise yourself so that he doesn't know that it's you. And of course, God, lets. A hija, the prophet know what's happening. And so God tells him what to say to her. And as she comes, God says, is that you? I know. In fact, he says, I know it's you. I know it's you. And so he tells her what's gonna happen to her son. Essentially his son, ab Baja will die. And he says, the reason why verse nine is because of all the evil that you have done above all who were before you and have gone and made yourself other gods and metal images provoking me to anger. And here's interesting terminology. And have cast me behind your back. Therefore, behold, I will bring harm upon the house of Jira oum, and I'm gonna cut off from Jira oum every male, and he goes on with more graphic imagery to say, here's what it's gonna look like. Interestingly enough, the child. Remember the child's name is Aja. He's talking to the prophet Aja here. His mom is. Anyway, he says, the child has something pleasing to me, and this is why he alone will get a burial. A burial was an honor. Burial's not something that you take lightly. And so the fact that he alone was given a burial, unlike the rest of his line, was something unique. God said, I'm gonna do that because there's something found pleasing to the Lord in him. His wife makes her way back and tells him all that the prophet said. And just as she enters on the threshold, verse 17 says here, the child did in fact die. The judgment of God was made clear and guess again, this is actually a mercy of God despite the fact that this is judgment. In verses 19 and 20, you have the end of Jerome's reign. He reigns for 22 years, and then he is finished. Now he begins a long line of unfaithfulness in the Northern kingdom, and so he's gonna remain infamous throughout all the first and second kings narrative. In fact, you're gonna see his name referenced over and over again, some kings following in the line or in the sins of Gerome, others exceeding him. But he remains one of those guys notorious for his evil deeds. In verses 21 through the end of chapter 14, we have an epilogue for Rehoboam. And it's not good. It says here in, in verses 23, really, 24, there was male cult prostitutes in the land. They did, according to the abominations of the nations, that the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. So instead of being the light and salt that they were supposed to be, they are actually walking in the same sins that God had judged the previous occupants for. And so God sends judgment and one of those judgments is shack, the king of Egypt. He comes up to Jerusalem and apparently. Ransacks the community. Not in a total destructive way, but he takes away the treasures of the house of the Lord. Takes away all the gold in verse 27, king em makes. Place shields of bronze in place of the golden shields that were taken away. And bronze is one of those. I obviously, it's a lesser medal. This is not a good thing. The kingdom's glory and shine and honor are now fading. And where gold once was, they now have bronze. This is showing the fact that Israel, excuse me, Judah is in decline. And this is God's judgment on the people, but it's only just beginning. So strap in your seat belt. It's gonna get pretty bumpy as we wrap up the book of First Kings Together. There you go. First Kings 12 through 14. That's everything that I have for you. Hopefully that was helpful. Would you please pray with me? Let's ask God to help us be faithful and not fall into the same traps that some of these guys fell into. Oh Lord, we need you. We can't do this without you. We can't do life. We can't breathe. We can't think. We can't eat, but we really have nothing apart from you. We have no good apart from you. Lord, feed us with the truth of your word. Help us to ingest it, not merely to ingest it, such as we have more knowledge, but Lord, help us to be transformed by the renewal of our mind. Help us to have the ability to test and discern what is true from what is almost true. Help us, Lord, always to hold up the commands. Amen to the commands of God in your word. Let us be so faithful to your word, Lord, that we are honored like the Berean who esteemed your word, took it seriously and examined it to see whether the things that are said are true. Let that be true of everyone here who's listening to this podcast, and especially Lord of our church, compass Bible Church in North Texas. We wanna be a Bible people. Now we can't do that apart from your enabling grace. So please give us that grace, Lord, that we might avoid some of these errors that we read about here in the book of First Kings. And to that end, Lord, we thank you for the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of some of these men. We ask all this in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you so much for joining me. It is an honor to have you. I'm so pleased that I get to do this for you. If you have any questions, feel welcome to reach out to me or send an email to the podcast@compassntx.org. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a great day.

thanks for listening to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in north Texas. You can find out more information about ourChurch@compassntx.org. We would love for you to leave a review to rate to share this podcast on whatever platform you happen to be listening on, and we will catch you against tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast.